Tomorrow, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, son of Ninoy the martyr and Cory the president, will leave Malacañang, his narrative as the country’s 15th president to be thenceforth written by history.
Farewell to the President who brought the country back into the approving eyes of the international community and to years of continued economic growth. It has been a winning streak for big business and stock market investors, for real estate magnates, with leavings for their many agents in the trade. Sadly for us consumers, though, the last six years have been quite a boon for the big guys whose economic domains are ensconced in government’s regulatory “capture.”
Farewell to the President who has demonstrated that a leader can last his term without having to be corrupt, as contra-distinguished from predecessors who were either personally corrupt, or allowed kin to profit immensely from government deals.
Yet whether due to inability to discern, or tolerance borne out of abiding loyalty to “friends,” the outgoing President suffered in the esteem of many Filipinos precisely because he allowed incompetents to continue presiding over some of government’s most important agencies.
Add to that the perception of many that the outgoing President was unable to feel the real public pulse, or was rather insensitive to the plight of the ordinary man because he himself was extraordinarily born to wealth and privilege.
This writer worked to make him president in 2010. I was conscripted into the campaign after watching how his numbers, astronomically high after the death of his mother, went zooming downwards after a few months of dismal misdirection. By the end of January 2010, just as Noynoy was technically even-steven with Manny Villar at 36 to 34 in the surveys, Serge Osmeña took over and asked me to assist him. We had to bring Villar’s numbers down, the only way to widen the gap between him and Noynoy. It was unpleasant, but it had to be done. The prize was no less than the presidency of the land for the son of the man who introduced me to the world of politics.
We made it, and triumphed even over President Joseph Estrada, a personal friend whom I served until the last day of his abbreviated stay in the palace by the dirty river.
The unpleasantness of the campaign tactics later took its toll upon me when I myself served under PNoy. But that’s another story, too long for this musing.
Tomorrow, President Aquino rides from his past glory, which was Malacañang, into his political sunset on Times Street. But history will be kind to the man. Fare thee well, Mr. President.
Tomorrow too, a new leader takes the helm at Malacañang —Rodrigo Roa Duterte, born in Maasin of the then-undivided Leyte to a Cebuano father and a mother from Agusan, but who was reared in Davao and lived most of his 71 years there.
He will be the first Mindanao leader to become president of the Republic, and the first Bisaya to be so elected since 1957, almost six decades ago.
He comes with great promise, at a time when the people are sick and tired of a polity that does not reward them enough for the toil and taxes they render to it.
The resentment over public trains that do not run right, over traffic in the metropolis that does not move, over petty crimes that victimize them and their children day in and day out, over the proliferation of illegal substances that have become all too commonplace, over the neglect that characterizes government service, on top of perceptions of official indifference to all of the above, all these put together, catapulted the son of Mindanao into the realm of public esteem and voter approval.
He has much on his plate. There are so many promises to keep. There are great expectations he must fulfill.
But the people who elected him into the highest office in the land, as well as those who did not, all together, must do their part as well.
There is a simple act that all of us must perform from hereon—follow the law. Respect the law.
Do it because the man we elected to the presidency will not only keep reminding us of that obligation, but would instill fear in the hearts of those who transgress. Do it because we should love our country.
And so, to Rodrigo Roa Duterte, as he takes the first steps in his rendezvous with destiny—Hail!
